There are hills in the neighborhood of Durkheim, but the soil to which the characteristic quality and value of its wines and those of Forst and Deidesheim are due is found on the surface of a wide and level area of gravelly deposit, so permeable, and consequently so poor, that a soil has to be made for it, and kept continually renewed, by hauling upon it basaltic earth and clay, together with large quantities of cow manure, which last the first two serve to retain, so it shall not be washed too freely through the sieve-like foundation beneath.

I found no difficulty in obtaining the guidance of a young gentleman, who was the son of a large proproprietor, and who was good enough to devote the whole day to me. Beyond question, the Rhenish Bavarians are the first vine-dressers of the world. Their vines are wide-spaced enough for plowing, yet all is done by hand; and how often in a season, think you, do those sturdy fellows stir the soil? Nine and ten times! On each acre they yearly bestow a hundred and forty days of hard labor. From distances of many miles they haul basaltic earth in such quantities as in time visibly to elevate the surface of the vineyards above surrounding fields. To this earth they seemed to attach more value than I did, after what I had seen on Lake Geneva. Its good

properties seemed only to be manifest when it was spread on other ground, and may have consisted merely in the attraction its dark color has for the sun's rays and its retentiveness of manure.

The wines thus produced are uncommonly fine, and mostly rich in bouquet-very different from what could be expected with such heavy manuring bestowed on a clayey or even a basalt soil.

The vines are of good stature, and trained on wire trellis. The oïdium is not an uncommon visitor, but is successfully met with sulphur treatment. Observing a sprinkling of whitewash on the vine-leaves along the outer border, and recalling the verdigris sprinkling noticed in Médoc, I asked the reason of it, but could get none better than that it rendered the ripening fruit unattractive-not to birds, but to boys. In the cellar of the father of young I saw the casks had received a good coat of coal tar, the object being, they said, to retain the freshness of the wine as early bottling will do. I think it was but an experiment, and not an established usage. It would certainly need to be very carefully done, and the odor should be well dried away before putting the casks in use.

Quitting the Rhine by the valley of the Maine, I had a glimpse of the vineyards producing the cele

brated Stein wine, which they put up in big-bellied bottles that look generous and honest, and are so, certainly, in comparison with the slim, long-necked flasks we cheat with at home, and yet they are themselves very short-comers in contrast with the full quart flasks sometimes seen in France, which last, I hope, will long be preserved as monuments of departed honesty.

Bow pruning seems to be a favorite in Rhenish Germany. Probably the strong manuring the vines receive in that country enables them to bear what it is insisted would be ruinous in France. And it may be that manure can be more freely used, without injury to the vine, on the extremely porous, gravelly plains, or well-drained, terraced mountain sides of the Lower Rhine, than on French soils. Guyot, we have seen, accompanies his recommendation of long pruning with the requirement of high manuring.

Undoubtedly the tendency in our day is to cultivate for quantity rather than quality, just as in cookery it is to sacrifice taste to convenience or economy. We invent no new dishes, but only quick, cheap, and easy ways of spoiling old ones. Modern improvements in the kitchen consist in neutralizing the flavor of our vegetables by boiling them with soda; raising bread with chemicals instead of yeast, and baking it

with a cast-iron heat instead of the gentler radiation of a clay surface; and as to joints and poultry, in thrusting them into the oven with a dripping-pan full of water, and there" soddening with water," against the express prohibition of the Bible, instead of "roasting with fire," as it expressly commands. And Science and Invention are spoiling our dinners for us as well as our wines.

CHAPTER XIV.

VIENNA, AND BEER, AND TOKAY.

VIENNA, where I remained three weeks, beats

the world, and even Paris, for bread, beer, and boots. I found the best beer, not where the Strausches perform, but in a cellar near the Opera-house, where, thirty feet under ground, a deal of deep drinking is done, and the new luxury of political discussion enjoyed.

If, as wise Babrius tells us, every drink has its peculiar effect, that of beer must be metaphysical, disputatious, over-refining. It must be so, for something has split German philosophy into half hairs, and German nationality into a hundred or more states. It could not have been wine, which is a unifier; so it must have been beer. All the world knows that German freedom and unity could have been secured in 1848 if the Frankfort Convention had not lost its head in a fog of abstractions, and spent six months over a Bill of Rights preliminary to a Constitution, allowing the kings to take courage, gather strength,